


A Wolf Behind A Mask

by oonaseckar



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Regency, F/M, Gen, Georgette Heyer - Freeform, Historical Romance, M/M, Regency, Regency Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-19
Updated: 2020-07-14
Packaged: 2021-02-24 16:41:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22321111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oonaseckar/pseuds/oonaseckar
Summary: Lady Lydia has the fullest intention of honoring her betrothal to Lord Jackson Whittemore.But may a Lady not allow herself a little fun, before being bound by the knots of matrimony?  With the assistance of her faithful ladies' maid, Allison?
Relationships: Allison Argent & Lydia Martin, Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski, Lydia Martin/Jackson Whittemore, Lydia Martin/Scott McCall, Lydia Martin/Stiles Stilinski
Kudos: 5





	1. on the brink of a deep chasm of disaster

**Author's Note:**

> Chapter title is Georgette Heyer.

Allison is a good girl, and a dutiful servant, and she has served her mistress, the Lady Lydia, for going on six years now. They've grown from the merest chits together, into girls and young women, and she is devoted to her mistress. Devoted.

That's not to say that the girl isn't the maddest most hoydenish creature that ever gave a March hare a run for its money. And the tenor of her mind, and the evenness of her spirits, hasn't been enhanced any since the engagement her aunt and guardian poked and prodded her into these two months back. If anything, she's grown a sight more harum-scarum than ever she was as a wild young single woman, an eligible heiress with half a dozen fortune-hunters after her, setting the Ton alight with her tomboy ways and foolish scrapes.

Allison should be used to her ways, by now, she thinks. But now, this? This is the very outside of beyond. She stands with her mouth agape in her mistress's dressing-room, and works the pretty chemise she was a moment ago intending to pass her through her hands, again and again, scarce knowing what she's about. “Mistress,” she says finally, after working her mouth a time or two without being able to get so much as a murmur out. “Miss Lyds. Please, tell me that you're just joking a simple country girl like me. In honesty, ma'am, you can't be sober and serious, now, can you?”

And Lady Lydia –- without a blink of her wide, innocent blue eyes, set in a china-doll face that charms all who may view it, below red curls most perfectly and elaborately dressed by Allison herself –- smiles at her, sweet as a parfait, mild as milk. “But why, Allison, my love, I do assure you. I am most perfectly serious. It is a very little thing that I am asking of you, after all. To spend no more than an hour or three in the most glittering company, in a ball-room lit by a thousand candles, with champagne and water ices on tap and offered to you by obsequious servants every moment. To dance –- now don't shilly-shally me, Allison, for I am the person to know that you can dance perfectly well, and well I ought to, with all the practising we used to do in the games-room at our old country house. Dear Treves, how sad I am that they sold it off for Papa's silly gambling debts! But to the point, Allison dear: all that I want you to do is to spend half an evening dancing with various eligible partis, in addition to my dear fiancé, eating hors d'ouevres and drinking punch. Does that really sound so very terrible a prospect? Even in order to oblige me?”

And at this, Lady Lydia affects her most pitiful and heartbroken face, and puts her head prettily on one side, hands folded beneath her chin. She flutters her eyelashes at Allison, and normally Allison would be quite undone –- for she is very fond of her mistress, and has a soft spot for her the size of Wales. But on this occasion, she hardens her heart, and stiffens her sinews in readiness. For one of them must display some sense in this matter, and it's evidently not going to be her mistress. For sure, she has a year on the other girl: but that only renders her twenty, to Lady Lydia's nineteen. Still, a servant girl's a grown woman at an age where her betters can still flibbertigibbett about and play the damn fool. Allison's been earning her own bread since she was scarce twelve years old, and she's long past the stage of being able to throw caution to the winds, to act impulsively without a thought for drastic consequences.

“My lady," she responds, more firm than helpless now, for this won't do, no it won't do whatsoever. “I can't. Only think of the trouble I'd be in if I was caught out. And not just me, but you too. You're affianced, my lady. It's a serious matter, to promise your hand and your heart to a fellow. The Lord Whittemore has a right to expect that you tell him no lies, and keep yourself only unto him. And that's whether you've reached the altar with him yet, or no. You're his promised bride, after all.” She sighs, and gazes at her mistress' pretty, stubborn face, wilfully uncomprehending.


	2. the one thing above all others

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Allison knows better than to go along with Lady Lydia's harebrained schemes. But it's hard for a ladies' maid to tell the lady she can't have her way... Especially in this case.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title is Georgette Heyer.

“Heavens, Ally, whatever do you think I have planned?” Lady Margaret asks, voice harsh and brittle. She swishes over to her dressing table, and picks up a fan, cooling herself with it, with her pretty face all pinched up in annoyance. “I do not propose to elope with this McCall fellow, silly girl,” she says. But her voice wavers just a fraction, as if the thought's crossed her mind, whatever her assertions. Still, she goes on more firmly, peering into the mirror and poking at the beautymark that adorns her lip. “I only want to make a last farewell, before I am doomed to matrimony with my dear Lord Whittemore, and must set aside any thoughts of running away with handsome strange men at court. Of Scottish and Spanish descent. Who are vouched for by our good Polish emigré friends, Count Stilinski and his son..." She gives a sideways peeking look at Allison, who knows full well she's being teased, that half of this is a mere tale that Lady Lydia's making up in her own mind to amuse herself. "Or marrying the one I truly love," Lydia airily continues. "Or bearing his sweet adorable little babies. Or ever, really, truly being happy again, ever, at all...”

And, oh dear, now her mouth is trembling, like full rosy sweet petals tremoring in the breeze. She gives Allison the sweetest, saddest, most imploring look in the world, and Allison knows it's nothing but some rather fine acting, she _knows_ it. And yet is that a translucently sparkling tear on her Lady's lower lid? Poor Allison is doomed, and succumbs immediately. “Well...” she says, and the hesitation is her damnation. Lady Lydia perks up immediately, smiling bright and beautiful through dew-sparkled lashes, brilliantly happy at the prospect of getting her own way. Of _course_ she's about to get her own way. Six years of service, and Allison still hasn't perfected the art of denying her anything, any more than most of her family and friends, barring the stepmother who's her sour-faced frowsty old guardian.

Allison sighs, heavily. “It's most unwise, milady,” she says stiffly, a last stand against the assault of ridiculous and unreasonable and irresistible schemes, that seem to spring from an inexhaustible font in her mistress's brain.

And then, conceding her defeat, “I hope you have a most foolproof plan, then, Lady L,” she groans. “For otherwise, we are doomed together, both your reputation, and my employment and good character for another position.”


	3. Chapter 3

And her young mistress beams, and catches her into a hug that knocks the breath clean out of her chest, laughing and singing out, “Joy! Joy! Alli, you are a darling, and it will work out tremendously fine, and I shall give you a handsome present when we are done, you will see!” And then she sobers, letting go of her lady's maid a moment, catches a hold of her elbow and draws her to sit, Titian and dark head close side by side in the window seat of her pretty lacy boudouir. “Now, my darling,” she says in thoroughly more matter-of-fact tones. “Come sit with me and we will hash it out together, into something we can call a plan. And then, to the ball you shall go, Cinderella!”

xxx

Half an hour later, and Allison is standing before the gilt frame of the full-length mirror in that same boudoir, and the change in her outwardly is so utter that few bystanders indeed would be willing to declare her the very same girl. Should there be any, which there aren't, a piece of great good fortune. And Lady Lydia is busying herself with tying a last blue bow in the fine delicate curls at the back of Allison's coiffure, with Allison putting a fingertip to delicately remove a slight excess of powder from beneath her dark eyelashes.

That's before Lady Lydia places the masque over her face, and ties and pins it firmly. “A masked ball, the very most convenient thing, how could I not take advantage of the opportunity afforded, my dear Alli?” she asks, cooing. Still she seeks to convince Allison with the soundness of her arguments, though really at this point there's no need. Allison is unconvinced: but she's given in, and it's some long measure too late to back out now.

But a little more reassurance wouldn't hurt, just the same. “My lady, I know you've promised me already, 'tis true: but still, will you not tell me one more time, that a meeting at most the space of the duration of this ball, is the most that will come of you slipping away to see your... to see this McCall fellow?” She hesitates over the name, not knowing how better to describe the young gentleman that her mistress has inexplicably taken a violent fancy to over these past few weeks. And those weeks span the period both before and after her introduction to, and engagement to, Lord Whittemore, the young lord approved by her guardian, recommended to her by all her friends, and seemingly amenable to entering into a marriage contract with a girl who makes quite evident her flagrant indifference to him on a weekly, if not daily basis.


	4. Chapter 4

If Lord Whittemore were under the impression that he is contracting a love-match, then the limping, halting, faltering progress of their courtship might be more painful to observe, even for a bystander on the very verges of the grand and fashionable world such as Allison herself has been these past six years. But such is so very clearly not the case, that it is only bewildering to watch the pair of them together, and to wonder what malign or mischievous fate has decreed them a fit match for each other, when their fervent mutual indifference shines out at the heart of every measure they tread in one another's company, every chaperoned walk they take through a fashionable park, every dutiful morning visit.

Or at least, curiosity on the subject might eat away at the aforementioned observer, were they not as aware as the rest of fashionable London and its drawing rooms that Lord Whittemore proposed to Lady Lydia four months back, when it was suggested to him that the mouldering and financially untenable country estate he cherishes, with its horde of tenant farmers dependent upon his patronage and custom, and the half dozen experimental schools, natural philosophy professorial seats and homes for orphans, waifs and strays that he supports out of a barely adequate income – adequate for many things, to another less eccentric man, but not to Lord Whittemore, with his passionate intellectual tastes and his bent for philanthropy – would benefit from the application of the fortune that Lady Lydia is due to inherit upon her majority, passed on to her by the doting Papa only one generation removed from trade, and the consumptive mama born into genteel poverty, and lifted out of it by a marriage of financial advantage and social suicide.

So that much, given the known facts, is reasonable and self-evident. What may be inexplicable, to one lacking the facts to deduce it, is why even given the fact of Lord Whittemore's proposal, Lady Lydia would choose to accept him. And Allison, being her ladyship's personal maid and her confidante of long standing, is in a position to know. A combination of factors come into play on the issue. Her preferred gentleman caller's impoverished status: Her mother's flat outright disapproval and refusal to countenance him as an eligible _parti_ : the years she would have to endure before she had control over her own funds, should she kick up her heels and wed him in any case: and the fact that her mother has promised to sign off on those funds and have them disbursed immediately, should Lydia agree instead to wed the suitor of her aunt's choosing, to wit, Jackson Whittemore, Fifth Earl of Beaconsdale.

Her own delicate, uncomfortably close association with Trade may also be a contributing factor. Lydia is the dearest girl in many ways, and as free of the taint of snobbery as anyone can be in the world that she inhabits. But in the world that she inhabits, that tends to mean not quite free of it, not really, despite her best efforts. Her social position is not quite so secure, her breeding so irreproachable – far from it, indeed – that she could with impunity scorn her world's standards and expectations, and marry a curate. Most especially not the curate she's picked to bestow with her heart, one Scott McCall, recently graduated in his theological studies, and serving out his clerical duties to the local bishop. A charming person, and Allison has seen it for her own eyes: but still only a curate. And not only that, but not quite a gentleman into the bargain: his own antecedents a trifle soiled by the taint of a mother who nursed with Miss Nightingale, and his father's big-city grocer's emporiums.


	5. Chapter 5

Still a very delightful fellow, and Allison will concede it. And yet Lady Lydia would have been much better keeping him as an occasional flirt and agreeable dance partner, she can't help but feel. At least, if she will not resign herself to an impoverished life as a curate's wife, even as a temporary matter of a few years – and it's clear that she won't. Allison's of the sternly Calvinistic opinion that it would serve her better to commit herself to the care of her fiancé, now that she has bound herself to the match, rather than allowing a lingering preference to dominate her mind, her heart and her dance-card. (And Allison could also find it in her heart to wish that the pleasant, open-faced Mr McCall had not been granted the curacy of a London Bishopric sufficiently close to fashionable London. With Bishop Deaton both indulgent of his curate, and well-connected himself, it renders it a practical matter for him to attend society balls, and still hang around the Lady Lydia like a bee buzzing at the heart of the rose.

And this is why she is fearful of the state of her mistress' heart, and perhaps her true plans. “ _Pish tush,_ ” says her ladyship, though, smiling brightly, and a trifle absently. “I would not play such a low trick on you, Alli, Only imagine the trouble you would be in. Hot soup indeed. Mulligatawny!”

Of course this is precisely what's unsettling Allison to begin with, or at least half of the matter. The lady's assurances are less comforting for that than you might think. “Do you promise, my lady?” she asks. "I would be let go, for sure, and my position here with you is a very great deal to me. It's a height I would surely never attain again. I'd end a barmaid in some low dockside dive, or stitching in a sweatshop till my eyes dimmed and gave out."


End file.
